"This was great. It shows a real spirit of cooperation ... It bodes well for the future."
Mayor-elect Eric Papenfuse

There’s a new vibe at Harrisburg city hall these days, as the city council digs into work on the 2014 budget. Tuesday night, the council’s budget and finance committee started reviewing the Thompson administration’s $77.8 million spending plan for next year. Here are highlights from the discussion:

* There are no obvious flashpoints, either for the council, the outgoing mayor or the incoming mayor. Councilmembers’ questions focused on technical matters, not policy disputes.

* The council knows incoming mayor Eric Papenfuse wants to put his own imprint on the spending plan. Budget and finance chair Brad Koplinski said his goal was to go over it with “a medium-to-fine-toothed comb. We know it’s going to be opened again” when the new mayor takes over. “We don’t want to nitpick.”

Council will have to approve any changes Papenfuse wants to make. The deadline for that work is February 16.

* Finalizing the recovery plan means city finances will be in better shape, but it’s still an austere budget.

When asked for his ideal scenario, city chief operating officer Bob Philbin told council it would take another $5 or $6 million of revenue to get to where the administration would like to be.

“It’s not an ideal budget,” Philbin said, “but it is tempered with where we are at the moment.” Total tax collections go up a bit, but tax rates stay the same.

* Mayor-elect Papenfuse likes what he’s seeing.

“The process is going smoothly,” he said afterward. He credited city council for exercising “due diligence,” while being flexible about potential changes he might want to pursue. He doesn’t have any detailed comments on the budget yet; he says his transition teams are still reviewing department operations. “I don’t want to prejudge the teams’ work.”

“This was great. It shows a real spirit of cooperation … It bodes well for the future.”

* Brad Koplinski wanted the public to know that the budget does not cut police or firefighters. He was talking about how the 2014 budget shows fewer positions than were authorized in the 2013 budget. He said the city never filled all the positions originally authorized for 2013.

Acting Police Chief Thomas Carter said, “We will be hiring police officers throughout 2014. We jumped the gun a little bit” with the higher number of positions put into the 2013 budget.

The fire department hopes to have 14 recruits into the fire academy by March, with graduation in June. There won’t be any savings on overtime until mid-year, when the new hires hit the firehouses.

* Councilwoman Susan-Brown Wilson reiterated her long-standing concern that the city’s computer technology is hopelessly outdated and inefficient. She’s frustrated that there is never enough money to modernize the systems.

* Code enforcement is grossly understaffed and there won’t be any hiring surge there.

* One important question was not asked Tuesday: What happens if the state doesn’t come through with $4.5 million payment for fire protection envisioned in the recovery plan? That payment is almost 6 percent of a budget that’s already well short of ideal.

The unspoken answer: Big Trouble.

Matt Zencey is Deputy Opinion Editor of PennLive and The Patriot-News. Email mzencey@pennlive.com and on Twitter @MattZencey. The full council currently plans to act on the budget on December 17.